According to the Census Bureau, the average household income of the poorest quintile is roughly $23,000.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, that increases to $49,000 after you account for taxes and government benefits. This compares to about $80,000 for the average middle-class household.
This looks probably a little better than the reality. Many people in that quintile will fail to take full advantage of the available benefits and therefore a realistic number will be below 49000, probably substantially below.
I would say that, I an effort to drown government in a bathtub, there are sizable disincentives to take advantage of those benefits. Intentional obstacles and difficulties are par for the course throughout the system. Stuff that takes time and just peeves people, reinforcing the notion that government is bad. It's purposely harmful death by a thousand paper cuts.
But most of the benefit people get, I am going to guess, is the Obamacare tax credit that has made health insurance affordable to regular folk who, before, were uninsured.
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Isn't this based on what people actually take advantage of?
Also, most of it is probably Medicaid/Medicare paying for care, which would not feel like getting extra money. It would be interesting to see what it looks like excluding that.
EITC, TANF and food stamps are substantial, as well.
AP:
Harris faces new urgency to explain how her potential presidency would be different from Biden’s
funny, but i thought she's supposed to explain how she's different wrt trump; i stand corrected
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She was his vice president. Why would it be that different? Ffs, that's not the urgent thing in this election. Fucking A!
Google AI says: "The median household income in the US is $74,580, so the middle-class range is roughly $49,715–$149,160."
The poor are now middle class?
Also, I know young people in the lower middle class who could no longer qualify for Obamacare, so they went without insurance. Some people in the poorest quintile get health insurance while some middle-class people with higher earned incomes don't.
Just observations, not making political points. If many of the poor can live more like the middle class, that’s a net good thing.
how many people are in the average household? How many adults? Children?
For a single person, ACA subsidies fade out by $58,000. idk if I would consider that lower middle class for a single person.
Why do you think Gemini would know the answer to this question? I also asked and got: "a range of $56,600 to $169,800 annually for a household of three."
Why should I trust either of these ranges?
Maybe not, haha. But when I looked quickly at other sources, there was similar variation. Defining the middle class can be subjective, depended on the criteria picked to define it.
As a democrat I know I’m supposed to care about the poor, but they’ve really made a mess of things. They don’t vote. They don’t appreciate our efforts. They don’t even pretend to be decent people. I’ve decided they aren’t worth my time. But you all keep thinking about how to help them. Someone has to.
They are no more or no less decent than any other American. If decency was the metric for anything hardly anyone would deserve anything.
Hamlet: “Judge each man to his desserts and none escape the whipping.”
Or words to that effect. It’s been a long time since I read it.
But that said I see Justin’s point. It’s frustrating to constantly battle for people who can’t be bothered to vote in their own self interest.
It might be worth remembering that many of the poor in this country are minorities of one group or another. Even if a given poor person is white, though, getting to vote isn’t the stroll in the park that it is for many of us. If you’re working a low end job, how do you get time to vote? How do you get to your polling place? How do you navigate the web to find all the information you need if the most you can say about technology is that you can manage to have an inexpensive cell phone?
Justin’s point is not at all well taken. He sounds exactly like a privileged person who can’t be arsed to learn even basic facts about how life really works for poor people. Try harder, people.